BULLER'S DOWNFALL.

Evening Star, Issue 11677, 8 February 1902, Page 3

BULLER'S DOWNFALL.

AND WHAT CAUSED TT. Tbs following interesting article, contributed to ‘ Mnuuey’*,’ is kom the pen of Mr Douglas Story, who was the only Britisher who accompanied the Boer forces in the field, and throws a great deal of light on on issue that has given rise to a deal of Mgry controversy in the English Press

General Sir Redvers Boiler has been removed from the command of the British First Army Corps and retired upon halfpay. Twelve months ago the British Press wa* confidently announcing his speedy elevation to the peerage as Lord Buller of Ladysmith. The reason advanced for this remarkable revulsion of public and War Office feeling is said to. have been a speech made by Sir Redvers at a lunch of the Queen’s Westminsters * rebutting certain charges of unfitness brought against him in connection with his assumption of the command of the First Army Corps. In that speech the general, affirmed his competency for command, his priority of claim over any officer junior to him in the service, and his chivalrous desire to protect a comrade in arms in the telegram which he despatched authorising Sir George White to surrender Ladysmith. The speech was admittedly one subversive of discipline, such a speech as Buller himself would have broken the most recently-joined lieutenant, under his command for having made. Still, it could not properly be called an attack upon his superiors, since bis appointment as commander of the First Army Corps came from the War Office, and he was engaged in vindicating that appointment. It was a reply in public to attacks made in public by civilian critics. Such a course is not permitted to a member of the service in any properly organised army—least of all in tho army of the United States. Sir Redvers Buller, old soldier, ex-adjutant general, had broken one of the canons of military etiquette, and h* has been called upon to pay the price. There is, however, something antagonistic to 4he sense of Anglo-Saxon fair play in thus Cashiering a brusque old soldier, goaded into retaliation by an anonymous for sentiments expressed in the warmth of post-prandial oratory. One is left Arith the impression of something withheld from pnblic knowledge, of an allembracing explanation sedulously kept secret. 'That this feeling has taken deep root on the British imagination is deducible from the many and absurd theories put forth to explain the action of the Secretary for War and Lord Roberts. It baa been suggested that it is a petticoat conspiracy led by T.ady Roberts —presumably in revenge for the death of her gallant son at Colenso : that it is an exhibition of meanness on the part of the Commander-in-Chief, who was jealous of the influence of his predecessor in command in South Africa; that it is part of an intrigue against the forces of the old regime, the nominees of Lord Wolseley. Of all those theories the only one Avith an atom of plausibility is the last. To make it all applicable, however, demands an entire change of front, a survey of the situation from a different Ariew point Id ordinary circumstances, to ascribe jealousy either to Lord Roberta or to Sir Redvers Buller would be to invite ridicule. They are men far above the realm of petty office politics. But war is an extraordinary circumstance, and in its conduct there arise questions of loyalty to old friends, old superiors, the devotion of men to lifelong theories. In these lies much of the explanation of the trend of affairs in South Africa. It may be that, as one Avho saw much of the war from the inside, who had unique opportunities of knowing the plans of the Boers and the disposition of their forces, as one whose present perspective is longer and less likely to be influenced by local jealousies and prejudices, L may be able to throw some light upon one of the most startling occurrences since the arraignment of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings.

THREE GREAT MILITARY SCHOOLS. At the beginning of the South African War Great Britain possessed three great military schools—the old Egyptian, the Indian, and the modem Egyptian. Those may be roughly differentiated as the school of strategy, presided over by Lord Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief: the school of tactics, beaded by Lord Roberts; and the school of organisation, dominated by Lord Kitchener. Between those various schools, and especially between the old Egyptian and the Indian, there existed keen jealousies, bitter rivalries. When it was realised that the troops in South Africa were altogether inadequate to withstand the Boer advance, the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley, selected General Sir Redyers Buller, Y.C., his chief of staff in the 1885 Soudan campaign, for the supreme command, providing him with ample forces, and leaving him free in his choice of strategy. General Buller sailed from England with the intention of leaving the defence of Natal to Sir George White’s division, he himself planning to lead the main army northward through Cape Colony and the Orange Free State upon the vital centres of the enemy’s organisation—Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Personally I have never received any satisfactory explanation of General BuDer** abandonment of this plan of campaign. It is said that he, on arrival *n Came Town, was so impressed with the political necessity of speedily relieving Ladysmith, the necessity, if a rising of the whole Dutch race in Gape Colony and Natal were to be obviated, of stopping the Boer advance southward in Natal, that, be decided to divert his main attack from the Free State upon the Boers around Ladysmith. GENERAL BULLEB’S ERROR IN STRATEGY. Politically he may have hem justified. Strategically he was not justified. If it he granted that military science is merely the application to a specific purpose of common sense, it will be readily understood that with an army of strictly limited numbers — 52,000 in all. with never more than 35,090 men on service at one time the Boers would have been forced to withdraw from the siege of Ladysmith in order to withstand the British advance through the Orange Free State. Had the Boers succeeded in first capturing Ladysmith and in taking General White and his 11,000 soldiers prisoners, they would have been setvouslv embarrassed ’by the necessity of detaching a sufficient force to guard them, and of setting apart a sufficient supply of food to maintain them. The Boers could spare neither men nor provisions, and the presence in their midst of so large a body of prisoners would have caused them more real trouble than their passive existence in a heleagured city ever did. Meanwhile, in & sense even more intelligible to Sir George White and his garrison, the Boers would have been materially weakened in their investment of Ladysmith. They possessed but few siege guns, and had been obliged to dismantle the forts at Pretoria in order to provide the necessary heavy artillery for the attack upon Ladysmith. These guns, the Long Toms of the war, would have had to be removed from the positions commanding Ladysmith to positions in the Free State, where thev could oppose the heavy artillcrv of the British advance. Besieged in such easy circumstances, Sir George White would* have been relieved of the supreme horror of his position, or would have been left free to develop measures for his own release. THE DUTY OF A COMMANDER-IN CHIEF. Time and again the foreign attaches who accompanied the Boer forces in the field have assured me that the isolated cities beset by the Boers were not matters for t."e attention of a British Commander-in-Chief in South Africa. They were mere incidents of the campaign. The attacking Comman-der-in-Chief was not the leader of a relief force, but the general commanding an army ■ent to end the war, to ensure victor}’. To fulfil his instructions properly he must paralyse the vital centre of his enemy’s organisation, and thus gain control of its members. Had Sir Redvers Buller followed his original plan, he would have secured the relief of Kimberley before February 15, the relief of Ladysmith before February 28, and the relief of Mafeking before May 16, 1900. Instead, he led his force against the Boers strongly posted on the hills commanding the Tnegla River in an* attempt to force Us passage; and on December 15, 1899, near Colenso, suffered defeat, with the loss of more than a thousand men and eleven guns. This reverse, coming as it did in a week tKat chronicled heavy casualties under

General Gatacro at Stormberg and trader General Lord Methuen at Magersfontein, startled the British people. They demanded a new leader, and on December 18, 1899, Field-marshal Lord Roberts was ordered to South Africa as Commander-in-Chief, with General Lord Kitchener os chief of staff, and with large reinforcements.

LORD ROBERTS ASSUMES CONTROL. The Indian and the modem Egyptian schools had superseded the old Egyptian combination. Unfortunately, Lord Wolscley could not bring hinwelf to face the complete suppression of his own nominee. The War Office order was worded in such a Avar that General Sir Redvers Buller was permitted to remain with a practically independent command in Natal. And so Irfird Roberts was supreme in Cape Colony and to the northward, Avith only the Secretary of War in authority over him. Sir Redvers Buller was supreme in Natal, with tho War Office in warm alliance with him. However, Sir Redvers had to submit bis despatches to his senior officer, and the Feld-marshal’s comments on his Spion Kop reports are historical. There were now in South Africa representatives of the three great military schools of Great Britain; two of them. Lord Roberts and Sir Redvers Buller. were candidates for the succession to the Commander-in-Chief of the army. Lord Kitchener was a loyal and devoted chief of staff to Lord Roberts, working hard at the organisation of the transport, the commissariat, and the, general efficiency of the army, leaving to Lord Roberts most of the strategical development of the war. Much gossip has been circulated with respect to a fancied estrangement between these two. When Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener were ordered to South Africa it avos assumed that the younger man would dictate the policy of the campaign, Lord Roberts contenting himself with signing headquarters orders. The Field-marshal, however, realised that with him lay the responsibility for the conduct of the Avar, and throughout he was careful to leave no doubt in the minds of the onlookers that he was conducting it. To this A r ery proper state of affairs Lord Kitchener lent his cordial and unAvavering support. Sir Redvers Buller remained alone, and, in a sense, independent in Natal.

THE SPIDN KQP BLUNDER. Meanwhile Buller had permitted Sir Charles Warren, one of h’s generals of division, to make an attack upon Spion Kop, the bastion hill in the angle of two ranges guarding Ladysmith from at tick from the south. That hill was known to be 2,oooffc from base to summit, to be inaccessible to artillery approaching from the smith, to be commanded and enfiladed by heavy Boer batteries occupying the two ranges to east and west. The idea was that from Spion Kop it would be possible to enfilade the ranges to right and left. Jt did not occur to the council of war that these ranges already covered Spion Kop with a fire capable of tremendous concentration. Despite those ascertained factors of the situation. Sir Redvers Duller entered no definite protest in the council of war that decided upon an attempt to take and to hold this untenable position. On the night of January 23, 5,000 men were moved upward under General Woodgate to the summit. In the darkness those 5,000 men took position on a narrow plateau five acres in extent. Trained upon them were ong Boer 94-pounder, four Krupp 12-pounders, and a number of Maxim-Nordenfeldt onepounders. As though to assist in the creation of a shambles, General Woodgate committed the same mistake in tactics that General Sir George Colley made at Majuba Hill. He occupied the geographical crest of the hill, leaving the military crest some distance beneath him to act as a rampart for the Boer marksmen. The result was defeat, terrible, bloody. General Woodgate bein" mortally wounded, Colonel Thornycroft withdrew the shattered remnants of his force, a force that had been exposed wihout shelter for twenty-four hours to a shell fire of seven shots a minute, itse.f possessing not one gun 'with which to make reply.

THE WEARY SUCCESSION OF RE

VERSES

While Sir Redvers Buller was thus busy throwing force after force of men against these stern, rocky barriers, guarded by invisible Boer marksmen supplied with smokelesspowder, Lord Roberts was preparing for his advance northward through the Free State, On February 12. 1900. his advance began ; on February 15 General French, his general in command of cavalry, relieved Kimberley; on February 22 he had corralled Gronje; on February 27 Cronjo capitulated with 4.600 men and six guns. These successes had their immediate effect upon the Boers in Natal. Mr Smuts, the State Attorney of the Transvaal and Government Advisory- to the CommandantGeneral, wrote a long and confidential letter to General Louis Botha, counselling him to move all troops in Natal backward from Ladysmith to the smaller, more easily defended position of the Biggarsberg, and bo to release a sufficiency of men to assist in the resistance of Lord Roberts’s advance. That letter, in the original pencil, I had in nrv possession in Pretoria, and had it in part translated for me by a Hollander gentleman now living in Montreal. Both letter and translation were stolen from me, with much of my haggace. on my way southward through De Wet’s country- to Cape Town. THE TRUE SAVIOUR OF LADYSMITH.

Late in February General Joubert moved his guns from the hills covering Ladysmith ; and on February 28 Lord Dundonald entered Ladysmith, General Louis Botha having fought a magnificent rearguard action against General Buller at Pieter’s Height to cover the withdrawal of the guns from Ladysmith. It is for the relief of Ladysmith that the British Press a year ago hailed with acclamation the proposed elevation of Sir Redvers. Duller to the peerage. As a matter of simple demonstration, the relief was performed by Lord Roberts, who drew over to the Free State the great majority of the Boer forces previously besetting General White’s garrison. Botha had less than 5.000 men opposing the entire force of Buller’s army at Pieter’s Heights. The contention, then, is that up to the relief of Ladysmith) Buller had done his duty as effectively as any British general, adopting his initial line of strategy, could have done. But its success depended solely on the power of Field-marshal Lord Roberts’s supporting attack in the Free State,

THE JEALOUSIES OF THE SCHOOLS. It was when Ladysmith had been relieved- and Sir Redvers Boiler’s chief task in South Africa had been accomplished that the jealousies of the opposing schools found vent. By May 1 Lord Roberts was prepared to begin his advance upon Johannesburg and Pretoria. As I understand his plan of campaign, he intended to move Buller to Laing’s Nek, in the angle between the Transvaal and Natal, trusting to find it lightly held by the Boers. General Buller was then, with Laing’s Nek as an elbow, to move his 30,000 men along the Free State base of the mountains, bending them inwards and upwards, sweeping everything before him to the Yaal. At the same time General Hunter was to perform a similar movement, using Fourteen Streams, the point of the angle on the west side of the Free State, as pivot, and so sweep the Free State clear to the Yaal. With General Lord Methuen on the left of his line of march and General lan Hamilton on the right, Lord Roberts would then have been enabled to advance with his main army, secure in the knowledge of cleared country to right and left and behind him. Instead of that, Lord Roberts was forced to march with his wings abreast of Ids main advance, with no cleared country on either side, and with the enemy dashing about at pleasure in front, on either ride, and behind him. To account for that Sir Redvers Buller must make answer.

BULLER DISAPPOINTS ROBERTS. As I understand it. Lord Roberts three times in the month of May sent strenuous appeals to Sir Redvers Boiler to advance. Each time Sir Redvers found ’excuse, pleaded an enemy in overwhelming force before Him, and represented that he was not in condition to move. In all this he was upheld by the War Office. Lord Roberts was powerless to enforce his will.

He had to advance without the strong supporting force on his right upon which he had counted so much, and had the terrible pain of seeing his entire plan of campaign made ineffective by the stubborn opposition of one man, supported by the jealous ill-will of a competing school. Because of that lack of co-operation Great Britain is still in the field to-day; the Boers are still an effective fighting force. On May 20, 1900, General Lukas Meyers, the general in command of the Boer Natal force, came back to Pretoria, and I saw him. Ho raid: '' I have returned to report to General Botha that my men will no longer stand, should General Buller i advance against them. If General Botha' hag the soma tab to tell of his men at the Vaal I shall, ns its Chairman, immediately call the Volksraad together and propose measures of surrender.” At that time General Buller was consistently reporting his inability to attack \he large force of Boers opposing bam. That force of Boers Avas 1.200 men urder Commandant Christian Botha, who succeeded General Lukas Meyers in supremo command. They guarded the Avhole border of Portuguese Fast Africa, SAvaziland, Zulnlar.d, and Natal from Knmatipoort to Van Reenan’s Pass —1,200 men in charge of 400 miles of frontier —and General Buller with 30,000 troops could not force a passage 1 It is told that a Scottish officer of Highlanders rode through Muller’s Pass in full uniform into the Free State, round the Free State face of the mountains, and back to Natal through Van Hecnan's Pass. Ho reported the passes totally unoccupied by Boers; and General Buller put him under arrest for undertaking such an. adventure Avithoiit specific authorisation!

On May 15 General Buller entered and occupied Dundee Avith only the opposition of a picket. On May 30 Lord Roberts entered Johannesburg; on June 5 the Union Jack floated over the Pretoria Raadzaal. General Buller still tarried in Natal. Roberts had performed his duty, hut his supporting columns to right and left were wanting. The enemy Avere all around him, and tho Field-marshal in Pretoria was as far from ending the war as when he arrived at Gape Toatu. It was not till after the middle of June that Sir Redvers Buller ventured to walk through Laing's Nek into the Transvaal. Never once since (heir entry into Ladysmith had his men been in touch with any considerable force of (he enemy. Once in the Transvaal he was under the direct command of Lord Roberts, and from that moment he did good work in the campaign. LORD ROBERTS IMPLACABLE.

To prove, though, that Lord Roberts had not forgotten nor forgiven the past, a little incident that occurred in . Pretoria, may he cited. A newspaper in London published an item of harmless gossip, absolutely without application to any of the events of the war, representing that Lord Roberts and General Sir Redvers Buller had put their horses at some hurdles on the Pretoria racecourse. Three days later came a cabled official denial from Lord Roberts that be had taken part in any such exercise with Sir Redvers Buller. In January Lord Roberts came home to be Comrnander-iu-Chief in succession to Lord Wolseley. Intrigue had been deep to secure the post for Sir Redvers Buller. Lord Wolseley. so it was said, fought hard to keep Lord Roberts another year in the field so that he might have passed the age limit for the appointment ; but the claims of the man could not be gainsaid, and Lord Roberts to-day is Commander-in-Chief in England, Avith power to demand from the King the retirement on half-pay of Sir Redvers Buller, the man aa’lio spoiled his campaign in South Africa.

In the ‘Gazette’ of April 16, 1901, in which were published the honors granted to officers serving in South Africa, was this paragraph relating to Sir Redvers Duller, the one-time Commander-in-Chief there ; “General the Right Hon. Sir Redvers Boiler, G.C.8., K.C.M.G., Y.C., held the chief command in South Africa until my arrival in the early part of January, 1901; from that time onward he was in command ot the Natal Field Force, and carried out the difficult operations terminating hi the relief of Ladysmith. Subsequent to that event Lis troops formed part of the main army which had for its object the occupation of the Transvaal up to Koomatipoort.’’ There was not one word of the kindly encouragement granted to all other generals singled out for mention in that ’ Gazette.’ Lord Roberts hid done his duty : he rested there.

And yet, all over the British Empire, there is no more popular leader ol men than General Bullcr. To his soldiers he is an idol. No other British general, save perhaps Wauchope or Hector Macdonald, could have maintained the same sickening day by day assault on the banks of the Tur'ela with the same losses as did Bullcr. To Tommy in the ranks ho was the man who showed him fighting, who led him where it was to be had in plenty. To his senior in the field he was the dog in the manger —the man who ruined a great triumph. Loyalty to a brother in arms is as valuable an attribute in a. genera! as courage in the field. To his inferiors Boiler is loyal as man can be; his telegram to Sir George While was but a manifestation of the chivalry in the man. To his Superiors, if they stand in his way, he can be. defiant as a bulldog on guard. Eor that defiance he has paid with his place on the active list.

Last December I received from the general a letter in which he expressed the definite determination to make no comment m writing upon matters in South Africa. .Had Sir Redvers Builer carried that resolution to the platform he might still be commander of the British First Army Corps, but the cause of his offending with the War Office would not have been removed.

“ Linesman,” who has been contributing a series of powerful articles on (Tie .Natal campaign to the pages of Blackwood, very strongly confirms the view of Mr Story. It is little wonder to know that his incisive style, vivid narratives, and judicial judgment of the events he was witness of (for there is internal evidence that he was actually fighting at .Spina Kop, Valkrantz, and Pieter’s Hill) have caused a great demand to spring up iu military circles at Home for the reproduction in permanent form of his narrative — it might almost bo termed history—of the campaign. This is what Linesman had to say concerning the blundering at Colenso: “ But there comes a moment -when even Boer nerves yield, and someone raises his riflo and fires—how well the British Army knows that solitary shot! It is supposed to be from the Dutch general a signal for all to commence firing—but I that it comes from some youthful Boer "crouching and trembling iu his trench, not with fear, but with that agony of something, perhaps of joy, which attacks most brave fighting men before the leash is removed and they are sent to their work. Were it a preconcerted signal, as the Boers pretend, it would be (the actions of Boer generals mostly are) much better timed, and would crack out when the assaulting columns were so closely committed that even a bloody retreat would bo difficult, and a victorious rush impossible for lack of men to make it. At Colenso, another thousand, yards and the army of Natal would have been no more; but the single rifle spoke, 10,000 trembling fingers pressed a trigger before the echoes had died away, and the army of Natal was saved. Let there be no delusions about Goleuso; it was not destruction, but salvation; once in the river-bed nothing human could have prevented the most awful massacre of modem time, compared to which Maiwand and Isandlwhana would have been but affairs of patrols, and the British nation might have become, instead o£ merely soriy, well-nigh insane.”